Thinglink – interactive pics for your homepage

I have just discovered Thinglink. A service started in 2010, which allows you to tag pictures on your homepage or blog as you would on Facebook or Youtube.

I think that the concept is pretty cool. Especially if you’re using a blog as a marketing tool for an e-commerce site, you can purvey your product pics with tags that will lead directly to the shop. Consequently you can now start an Ikea-like Facebook campaign on your own site, given that you can add as many tags as you want on a pic (though, you might want to leave enough space so as to still discern the image amongst all the tags). So if you have a photo of several products, place a tag on each one of them with a link (incl. a description) to the product page in your shop. The tags, of course, can also be used to lead you to more background information. Or you can use them to maximize the message of the image.

Additionally, you can also let your pictures speak! How it works? Thinglink allows you to tag a Soundcloud-URL – either of an audio file you previously uploaded or any in their library – and, thus, provide your image with sound. Once the tag is clicked a player automatically pops up.

Here an example of what it looks like (one small minus point, even though it keeps the integrity of the image: you have to actually move your mouse over the pic in order to see the tags – something most users will not be used to doing on a regular site):

Naturally Thinglink also offers the option to share the picture on the social networks and provides you with the stats of your tags on your account.

And what good does this do? First of all, it should be noted that the service is free. All you have to do is register and then place an HTML-Code on your Homepage (or a plug-in in the case of blogs). As for the click-through-rate (CTR)…Depending on where you look on Thinglink you get different results (“guys, make up your mind! different numbers does not convey seriousness….). At one point, they say that it’s between 1,5-20% (again, offering such a wide range, does not transmit seriousness). On another occasion they say it’s between 1,5-5% (which seems more probable to me). Whatever the case is. It’s a free tool, which, in my opinion, offers interesting options to make more of the pictures on your website.